Fat Princess Still Fat, Still Awesome

Plenty of video and hands-on impressions of the controversial PlayStation Network title trickling from its Las Vegas showing

Every year, the editors of tech-influenced publications have the exact same discussion: should we bother going to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas? If you’re from somewhere like Cnet or Engadget, its a no-brainer, as the audience demands to know about the latest and greatest in television technology and bizarre accessories. But if you’re from somewhere like Game Informer or hey, even The Escapist, CES usually means disappointment and wasted airfare as publishers typically hold off on surprises for the gaming industry, with of course, rare exceptions. This is one of them.

Titan Studios‘ PSN exclusive, Fat Princess, was made available for hands-on play, having been largely hidden since its initial debut at E3 2008. In its original 30 second trailer format, gamers were immediately intrigued by the idea of a simplistic capture-the-flag game featuring an adorable yet violent visual style and of course, one major change to the standard formula: the flag was an increasingly obese woman. Naturally, this revelation ticked off certain activists, but its hard to argue with its message. If you keep someone captive and feed them nothing but cake, they’re going to become festively plump.

GameTrailers returned from Vegas with a three-part walk through of the basics behind Fat Princess, hosted by Brian Dunn of SCEA, which goes a long way to show off not just the technical aspects of the game but exactly how the five classes and princess capturing nonsense fits together. IGN and GameSpot continue the trend of glowing praise for the game, with the former reconfirming that Sony’s goal is for it to feature 32-player online play with voice chat for all. Fat Princess is most definitely one of the most exciting digital titles in 2009 and so I hope that Sony doesn’t keep it in the dark for much longer.